Just a quick question. The elbowed nipple on top of my valve cover is screwed.

As you can see....the hose it pushed all the way up against the cover because of the missing section. Anyway....in my search for a valve cover, I am not noticing any with the "2400" on top. All I see are the "Nissan OHC" ones. No big deal, just wondering which years had these. Picture below.

The "2400" valve covers are early 70-71 covers. After that they changed to the Nissan OHC. I'd guess, although I could be wrong, that someone replaced yours, if the car is the '72 in your sig. By 72, I think it would have been the Nissan OHC cover. I've attached a pic of the VC off my '70 car.

You should be able to replace the elbow. They are screwed in then epoxy'd to prevent them from coming loose.

You might sell the cover on here or eBay, because many people with the early cars are looking for them. Let the new owner fix the elbow and you could go with the Nissan OHC cover that the '72s came with. Or keep it because it is unique. I have one because my car has a 12/70 build date, but even if I replace the (non-matching) L24 with an L28 I think I'll keep the 2400 cover anyway.

i was gonna say to do that. do an l28 swap, and keep the 2400 ohc. it would be cool, and sleeper (unless they looked at the block...)

That is true. Sleeper, no doubt. I don't think any Honda-boy would know where to look unless he knew about the Z. :sleep:

bah, sell that sucker to someone who needs it for a restore and who will pay $$$ for it. Focus on go fast parts! That's just me though.

BTW, do you have a full size image of your avatar? I like that drawing! Kinda what I want to do.

Well....according to my engine number, I found out from a previous post that its not a 72 engine. The engine number is L24 008107. Carl sez that should give it a birthdate in the neighborhood of 6/70, which would explain the E31 head, and probably the valve cover. If I can locate an elbow....I will just keep it. Was just wondering why I was not seeing any similar valve covers. Thanks for all the input. Now I'm off to find an elbow.

Zthing,

You have an early engine in your car and I was going to mention it in the other thread. The 2400 valve cover is not very common and usually sells for over $100 on eBay. I would recommend repairing yours with parts from the more common OHC valve cover. Also, your engine should have the eight counterweight crankshaft http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4959 which is nice. Evidently someone took your original engine out and replaced it with the earlier one, probably not realizing what they were doing. In my opinion your engine is more valuable and I would recommend keeping it in good repair.

26th-Z......I am the 3rd (and last if I can help it) owner of this Z. The fella I purchased the car from said the original owner was a performance enthusiast. Maybe he was a fan of the earlier engine, who know's. I am getting mixed comments on the Weber carb setup he obviously installed. Probably gonna play with those for a while and keep my eyes open for the SU's in the meantime. Thanks for the info and link to the webpage.

Zthing,

I would definitely keep the 2400 VC…. They are getting hard to find and it would be well worth the fixing and polishing (if I may add). I get lots of compliments on mine simply because its different.